Do all English, French and Dutch-speaking Caribbean people speak a creole as a mother tongue?
A. No, this is a stereotype. There are significant Caribbean-born minorities that do not speak a creole language as a mother tongue and/or second language, though members of these groups may be either a) quite proficient in the variety of their territory according to the situation and context, or b) passive bilinguals. The vast majority of West Indians in anglophone, francophone and Dutch-speaking islands do speak the creole language of their territory as a mother tongue, and these Creole speakers may or may not be fluent in the official language of their territory. Most Caribbean varieties of English are as old as Early Modern English, the period in the history of English (1500-1700) when Modern English began to undergo standardisation. These varieties of English belong more to the ‘inner circle’ than the ‘outer circle’ by Crystal’s definition (Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language), but the situation is probably much more complex than this. Up to the 1960s, since anglophone
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